The Cycle of the Year as Breathing-Process of the Earth

Schmidt Number: S-5225

On-line since: 11th April, 2004

IV

I have frequently referred recently to the connection the course of
the year has with various aspects of human life, and during the Easter
days I pointed especially to the connection with the celebration of
festivals. Today I should like to go back to very ancient times and
say more on this subject, just in relation to the ancient Mysteries.
This can perhaps deepen in one way or another what we have spoken of
before.

To the people of very ancient periods on Earth, the festivals that
took place during the year formed a very significant part of their
lives. We know that in those ancient times the human consciousness
worked in an entirely different way from that of later times. We might
ascribe a somewhat dreamy nature to this old form of consciousness.
And indeed it was out of this dream condition that those insights
arose in the human soul, in the human consciousness, which then took
on the form of myths and in fact became mythology.

Through this dreamy, or we can also say instinctively clairvoyant
consciousness people saw more deeply into the spiritual environment.
But precisely through this more intensive kind of participation, not
just in the sensible workings of Nature, as is the case today, but
also in the spiritual events, people were all the more involved with
the phenomena connected with the cycle of the year, with the differing
aspects of Nature in spring and in autumn. I have pointed to this just
in recent days.

Today I want to share something entirely different with you in this
regard, and that is, how the festival of Midsummer, which has become
our St. John's festival, and the Midwinter festival, which has become
our Christmas, were celebrated in connection with the old Mystery
teachings. To begin with, we must be quite clear that the humanity of
the ancient times of which we are speaking did not have a full
ego-consciousness, as we do today. In the dreamlike consciousness, a
full ego-consciousness was lacking; and when this is the case, people
do not perceive precisely that which present-day humanity is so proud
of. Thus the people of that period did not perceive what existed in
dead nature, in the mineral nature.

Let us keep this firmly in mind, my dear friends: It was not a
consciousness that flowed along in abstract thoughts, but it lived in
pictures; yet it was dreamlike. These people entered into, for
example, the sprouting, burgeoning plant-life and plant-nature in
spring far more than is the case today. Again, they felt the shedding
of the leaves, their drying up in autumn, the whole dying away of the
plant world; felt deeply also the changes the animal world lived
through during the course of the year; felt the whole human
environment to be different when the air was filled with butterflies
fluttering and beetles humming. They felt their own human weaving in a
certain way as being alongside the weaving and being of the plants and
animal existence. But they not only had no interest, they had no
proper consciousness for the mineral realm, for the dead world outside
them. This is one side of the earlier human consciousness.

The other side is this: that no interest existed among this ancient
humanity for the form of man in general. It is very difficult
today to imagine what the human perception was in this regard, that
people in general took no particular interest in the human figure as a
space-form. They had, however, an intense interest in what pertains to
race. And the farther back we go into ancient cultures, the less do we
find people with the common consciousness interested in the human
form. On the other hand, they were interested in the color of the
skin, in the racial temperament. This is what people noticed. On the
one side man was not interested in the dead mineral world, nor, on the
other, in the human form. There was an interest, as we have said, in
what pertains to race, rather than in the universally human, including
the outer form of man.

The great teachers of the Mysteries simply accepted this as a fact.
How they thought about it, I will show you graphically in a drawing.
They said to themselves: The people have a dreamlike
consciousness by means of which they perceive very clearly the plant
life in their environment.  In their dream-pictures these
people indeed lived with the plant life; but their dream consciousness
did not extend to the comprehension of the mineral world. So the
Mystery teachers said to themselves: The human consciousness
reaches on the one side to the plant life [see drawing], which
is dreamily experienced, but not to the mineral; this lies outside
human consciousness. And on the other side, men feel within them what
still binds them with the animal world, that is, what pertains to
race, what is typical of the animal. [See drawing]. On the
other hand, what makes man really man, his upright form, the space
form of his being, lies outside of human consciousness.

Thus, the specifically human lay outside the interest of these people
of ancient times. We can characterize the human by thinking of it, in
the sense of this ancient humanity, as enclosed within this space
[shaded portion in drawing], while the mineral and the
specifically human lay outside the realm of knowledge generally
accessible to those people who carried on their lives outside the
Mysteries.

But what I have just said applies only in general. With his own
forces, with what man experienced in his own being, he could not
penetrate beyond this space [see drawing], to the mineral on
the one side, to the human on the other. But there were ceremonies
originating in the Mysteries which brought to man in the course of the
year something approximating the human ego-consciousness on the one
side and the perception of the general mineral kingdom on the other.

Strange as it may sound to people of the present time, it is
nevertheless true that the priests of the ancient Mysteries arranged
festivals by whose unusual effects man was lifted out above the
plant-like to the mineral, and thereby at a certain time of year
experienced a lighting up of his ego. It was as if the ego shone into
the dream-consciousness. You know that even in a person's dreams
today, one's own ego, which is then seen, often constitutes an element
of the dream.

And so at the time of the St. John's festival, through the ceremonies
that were arranged for those among the people who wanted to take part
in them, ego-consciousness shone in just at the height of summer. And
at this time of midsummer people could perceive the mineral realm at
least to the extent necessary to help them attain a kind of
ego-consciousness, whereby the ego appeared as something that entered
into dreams from outside. In order to bring this about, the
participants in the oldest midsummer festivals  those of the
summer solstice which have become our St. John's festival  the
participants were led to unfold a musical-poetic element in round
dances having a strong rhythmic quality and accompanied by song.
Certain presentations and performances were filled with distinctive
musical recitative accompanied by primitive instruments. Such a
festival was completely immersed in the musical-poetic element. What
man had in his dream-consciousness he poured out into the cosmos, as
it were, in the form of music, in song and dance.

Modern man can have no true appreciation of what was accomplished by
way of music and song during those intense and widespread folk
festivals of ancient times, which took place under the guidance of men
who in turn had received their guidance from the Mysteries. For what
music and poetry have come to be since then is far removed from the
simple, primitive, elemental form of music and poetry which was
unfolded in those times at the height of summer under the guidance of
the Mysteries. For everything the people did in performing their
round-dances, accompanied by singing and primitive poetic recitations,
had the single goal of bringing about a soul mood in which there
occurred what I have just called the shining of the ego into the human
spirit.

But if those ancient people had been asked how they came to form such
songs and such dances, by means of which there could arise what I have
described, they would have given an answer highly paradoxical to
modern man. They would have said, for example: Much of it has
been given to us by tradition, for those who went before us have also
done these things. But in certain ancient times they would have
said: One can learn these things also today without having any
tradition, if one simply develops further what manifests itself. One
can still learn today how to make use of instruments, how to form
dances, how to master the singing voice  and now comes the
paradox in what these ancient people would have said. They would have
said: It is learned from the songbirds.  For
they understood in a deep way the whole import of the songbirds'
singing.

My dear friends, mankind has long ago forgotten why the songbirds
sing. It is true that men have preserved the art of song, the art of
poetry, but in the age of intellectualism in which the intellect has
dominated everything, they have forgotten the connection of singing
with the whole universe. Even someone who is musically inspired, who
sets the art of music high above the commonplace, even such a man,
speaking out of this later intellectualistic age, says: I sing
as the bird sings who dwells in the branches. The song that issues
from my throat is my reward, and an ample reward it is. Indeed,
my dear friends, the man of a certain period says this. The bird,
however, would never say such a thing. He would never say: The
song that issues from my throat is my reward. And just as little
would the pupils of the ancient Mystery schools have said it. For when
at a certain time of year the larks and the nightingales sing, what is
thereby formed streams out into the cosmos, not through the air, but
through the etheric element; it vibrates outward in the cosmos up to a
certain boundary... then it vibrates back again to Earth, to be
received by the animal realm  only now the divine-spiritual
essence of the cosmos has united with it.

And thus it is that the nightingales and the larks send forth their
voices into the universe (red) and that what they thus send
forth comes back to them etherically (yellow), for the time
during which they do not sing;

but in the meantime it has been filled with the content of the
divine-spiritual. The larks send their voices out over the cosmos, and
the divine spiritual, which takes part in the forming, in the whole
configuration of the animal kingdom, streams back to the Earth on the
waves of what had streamed out in the songs of the larks and the
nightingales.

Therefore if anyone speaks, not from the standpoint of the
intellectualistic age, but out of the truly all-encompassing human
consciousness, he really cannot say: I sing as the bird sings
who dwells in the branches. The song that issues from my throat is my
reward, and an ample reward it is. Rather, he would have to say:
I sing as the bird sings who dwells in the branches. And the
song which streams forth from his throat into the cosmic expanses
returns to the Earth as a blessing, fructifying the earthly life with
divine spiritual impulses which then work on in the bird world and
which can only work in the bird world because they find their way in
on the waves of what has been ‘sung out’ to them into the
cosmos.

Now of course not all creatures are nightingales and larks; also of
course not all of them send out song; but something similar even
though it is not so beautiful, goes out into the cosmos from the whole
animal world. In those ancient times this was understood, and
therefore the pupils of the Mystery-pupils were instructed in such
singing and dancing as they could then perform at the St. John's
festival, if I may call it by the modern name. Human beings sent this
out into the cosmos, of course not now in animal form, but in
humanized form, as a further development of what the animals send out
into cosmic space. And there is something else yet that belonged
to those festivals: not only the dancing, the music, the song, but
afterward, the listening. First, there was the active
performance in the festivals; then the people were directed to listen
to what came back to them. For through their dances, their singing,
and all that was poetic in their performances, they had sent forth the
great questions to the divine spiritual of the cosmos. Their
performance streamed up, as it were, into cosmic spaces as the water
of the earth rises, forming clouds above and dropping down again as
rain. Thus, the effects of the human festival performances arose and
came back again  of course not as rain, but as something which
manifested itself to man as ego-power. And the people had a
sensitive feeling for that particular transformation which took place
in the air and warmth around the Earth, just about the time of the St.
John's festival. Of course the man of the present intellectualistic
age disregards anything like this. He has something else to do than
people of olden times. In these times, as also in others, he has to go
to five o'clock teas, to coffee parties; he has to attend the theater,
and so on; he simply has something else to do which is not dependent
on the time of year. In the doing of all this, man forgets that
delicate transformation which takes place in the Earth's atmospheric
environment.

But these people of olden times did feel how different the air and
warmth become around St. John's time, at the height of summer, how
these take on something of the plant nature. Just consider what kind
of a perception that was  this sensitive feeling for all that
goes on in the plant world. Let us suppose that this is the Earth, and
everywhere plants are coming out of the Earth.

The people then had a subtle feeling awareness of what is developing
there in the plant, of what lives in the plant. They had in the spring
a general feeling of nature, of which an after-echo is still retained
in our language. You will find in Goethe's Faust the expression
es gruenelt (It is beginning to get green). Who
notices nowadays when it is growing green, when the greenness rising
up out of the Earth in the spring, wells and wafts through the air?
Who notices when it grows green and when it blossoms? Well, of course
people see it today; the red and the yellow of the flowers
please them; but they do not notice that the air becomes quite
different when the flowers bloom, and again when the fruit is formed.
Such living participation in the plant world no longer exists in our
intellectualistic age, but it did exist for the people of ancient
times.

Hence they were aware of it in their perceptive feeling when the
greening, blooming and fruiting came toward them 
not now out of the Earth, but out of the surrounding atmosphere; when
air and warmth themselves streamed down from above like something akin
to plant nature (shaded in drawing). And when air and warmth
became thus plant-like, the consciousness of those people was
transported into that sphere in which the I then
descended, as answer to what they had sent out into the cosmos in the
form of music and poetry.

Thus the festivals had a wonderful, intimate, human content. This was
a question to the divine-spiritual universe. Men received the answer
because  just as we perceive the fruiting, the blossoming, the
greening of the Earth today  they felt something plant-like
streaming down from above out of the otherwise merely mineral air. In
this way there entered into the dream of existence, into the ancient
dreamy consciousness also the dream of the ego.

And when the St. John's festival was past and July and August came
again, the people had the feeling We have an ego, but this ego
remains up there in heaven and speaks to us only at St. John's time.
Then we become aware that we are connected with heaven. It has taken
our ego into its protection. It shows it to us when it opens the great
window of heaven at St. John's time. But we must ask about it. We must
ask as we carry out the festival performances at St. John's time, as
in these performances we find our way into the unbelievably close and
intimate musical and poetic ceremonies.  Thus these
ancient festivals already established a communication, a union,
between the earthly and the heavenly.

You see this whole festival was immersed in the musical, in the
musical-poetic. I might say that in the simple settlements of very
ancient peoples, suddenly, for a few days at the height of summer,
everything became poetic  although it had been thoroughly
prepared beforehand by the Mysteries. The whole social life was
plunged into this musical-poetic element. The people believed that
they needed this for life during the course of the year, just as they
needed daily food and drink; that they needed to enter into this mood
of dancing, music and poetry, in order to establish their
communication with the divine-spiritual powers of the cosmos. A relic
of this festival remained in a later age, when a poet said, for
example; Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles, the son of
Peleus, because he still remembered that once upon a time the
great question was put before the deity, and the deity was expected to
give answer to the question of men.

Just as these festivals at St. John's time were carefully prepared in
order to pose the great question to the cosmos so that the cosmos
might assure man at this time that he has an ego, which the heavens
have taken into their protection, so likewise was prepared the
festival at the time of the winter solstice, in the depths of winter,
which has now become our Christmas festival. But while at St. John's
time everything was steeped in the musical-poetic, in the dance
element, now in the depths of winter everything was first prepared in
such a way that the people knew they must become still and quiet, that
they must enter into a more contemplative element. And then there was
brought forth  in these ancient times of which outer history
provides no record, of which we can only know through spiritual
science  all that during the summer had been in the forming and
shaping and imaging elements which reached a climax in the festivals
in music and dance. During that time these ancient people, who in a
certain way went out of themselves in order to unite with the ego in
the heavens, were not involved in learning anything. Besides the
festival, they were occupied in doing what was necessary for their
subsistence. Instruction waited for the winter months, and this
reached its culmination, its festival expression, at the time of the
winter solstice, in the depth of winter, at Christmas time.

Then began the preparation of the people, again under the guidance of
pupils of the Mysteries, for various spiritual celebrations which were
not performed during the summer. It is difficult to describe in modern
terms what the people did from our September/October to our Christmas
time, because everything was so very different from what is done now.
But they were guided in what we would perhaps call riddle-solving, in
answering questions that were put in a veiled form so that people had
to discover a meaning in what was given in signs. Let us say that the
Mystery-pupils gave to those who were learning in this way some kind
of symbolic image, which they were to interpret. Or they gave what we
would call a riddle to be solved, or some kind of incantation. What
the magic saying contained, they were to apply to Nature, and thus
divine its meaning.

But especially there was careful preparation for what later took on
the most varied forms among the different peoples; for example, for
what was known in northern countries at a later time as the throwing
of the runic wands so that they formed shapes which were then
deciphered. People devoted themselves to these activities in the depth
of winter; but above all, those things were cultivated that then led
to a certain art of modeling, in a primitive form of course.

Among these ancient forms of consciousness was a most singular one,
paradoxical as it sounds to modern people, and it was as follows: With
the coming of October, an urge for some sort of activity began to stir
in people's limbs. In the summer a man had to accommodate the
movements of his limbs to what the fields demanded of him; he had to
put his hands to the plough; he had to adapt himself to the outer
world. When the harvest had been gathered in, however, and his limbs
were rested, then a need stirred in them for some other form of
activity, and his limbs took on a longing to knead. Then people
derived a special satisfaction from all kinds of plastic, moulding
activity. We might say that just as an intensive urge had arisen at
the time of the St. John's festival for dancing and music, so toward
Christmas time an intensive urge arose to knead, to mould, to create,
using any kind of pliant substance available in nature. People had an
especially sensitive feeling, for example, for the way water begins to
freeze. This gave them the specific impulse to push it in one
direction and another, so that the ice-forms appearing in the water
took on certain shapes. Indeed people went so far as to keep their
hands in the water while the shapes developed and their hands grew
numb! In this way, when the water froze under the waves their hands
cast up, it assumed the most remarkable artistic shapes, which of
course again melted away.

Nothing remains of all this in the age of intellectualism except at
most the custom of lead-casting on New Year's Eve, the Feast of St.
Sylvester. In this, molten lead is poured into water, and one
discovers that it takes on shapes whose meaning is then supposed to be
guessed. But that is the last abstract remnant of those wonderful
activities that arose from the impelling force in Nature experienced
inwardly by the human being, which expressed itself for example as I
have related: that a person thrust his hand into water which was in
process of freezing, the hand then becoming numb as he tested how the
water formed waves, so that the freezing water then
answered with the most remarkable shapes. In this way the
human being found the answers to his questions of the Earth.
Through music and poetry at the height of summer, he turned toward
the heavens with his questions, and they answered by sending
ego-feeling into his dreaming consciousness. In the depth of winter he
turned for what he wanted to know not now toward the heavens, but to
the earthly, and he tested what kind of forms the earthly element can
take on. In doing this he observed that the forms which emerged had a
certain similarity to those developed by beetles and butterflies. This
was the result of his contemplation. From the plastic, formative
element that he drew out of the nature processes of the Earth, there
arose in him the intuitive observation that the various animal forms
are fashioned entirely out of the earthly element. At Christmas man
understood the animal forms. And as he worked, as he exerted his
limbs, even jumped into the water and made certain movements, then
sprang out and observed how the solidifying water responded, he
noticed in the outer world what sort of form he himself had as man.
But this was only at Christmas time, not otherwise; at other times he
had a perception only of the animal world and of what pertains to
race. At Christmas time he advanced to the experience of the human
form as well.

Just as in those times of the ancient Mysteries the ego-consciousness
was mediated from the heavens, so the feeling for the human form was
conveyed out of the Earth. At Christmas time man learned to know the
Earth's form-force, its sculptural shaping force; and at St. John's
time, at the height of summer he learned to know how the harmonies of
the spheres let his ego sound into his dream-consciousness.

And thus at special festival seasons the ancient Mysteries expanded
the being of man. On the one side the environment of the Earth
extended out into the heavens, so that man might know how the heavens
held his I in their protection, how his I
rested there. And at Christmas time the Mystery teachers caused the
Earth to give answer to the questioning of man by way of plastic
forms, so that man gradually came to have an interest in the human
form, in the flowing together of all animal forms into the human form.
At midsummer man learned to know himself inwardly, in relation to his
ego; in the depth of winter he learned to feel himself outwardly, in
relation to his human form. And so it was that what man perceived as
his being, how he actually felt himself, was not acquired simply by
being man, but by living together with the course of the year; that in
order for him to come to ego-consciousness, the heavens opened their
windows; that in order for him to come to consciousness of his human
form, the Earth in a certain way unfolded her mysteries. Thus the
human being was inwardly intimately linked with the course of the
year, so intimately linked that he had to say to himself: I know
about what I am as man only when I don't live along stolidly, but when
I allow myself to be lifted up to the heavens in summer, when I let
myself sink down in winter into the Earth mysteries, into the secrets
of the Earth.

You see from this that at one time the festival seasons with their
celebrations were looked upon as an integral part of human life. A man
felt that he was not only an earth-being but that his essential being
belonged to the whole world, that he was a citizen of the entire
cosmos. Indeed he felt himself so little to be an earth-being that he
actually had first to be made aware of what he was through the Earth
by means of festivals. And these festivals could be celebrated only at
certain seasons because at other times the people who experienced the
course of the year to some degree would have been quite unable to
experience it at all. For all that the people could experience through
the festivals was connected with the related seasons.

Mark you, after man has once achieved his freedom in the age of
intellectualism, he can certainly not come again to this sharing in
the life of the cosmos in the same way that he experienced it in
primitive ages. But he can nevertheless come to it even with his
modern constitution, if he applies himself once more to the spiritual.

We might say that in the ego consciousness which mankind has had for a
long time now, something has been drawn in which could be attained
only through the windows of heaven in summer. But just for that reason
man must be learning to understand the cosmos, acquire for himself
something else which in turn lies beyond the ego. It is natural today
for people to speak of the human form in general. Those who have
entered into the intellectual age no longer have a strong feeling for
the animalistic-racial element. But just as this feeling formerly came
over man, I should like to say as a force, as an impulse, which could
be sought only out of the Earth, so today, through an understanding of
the Earth which cannot be gained by means of geology or mineralogy but
only once more in a spiritual way, man must come again to something
more than the mere human form.

If we consider the human form we can say: In very ancient times man
felt himself within this form in such a way that he felt only the
external racial characteristics connected with the blood, but failed
to perceive as far as the skin itself (red in drawing); he did
not notice what formed his outline.

Today man has come so far that he does notice his outline, his bodily
limits. He perceives his contour indeed as the typically human feature
of his form (blue). Now, however, man must come out beyond
himself; he must learn to know the etheric and astral elements outside
himself. This he can do only through the deepening of spiritual
science.

Thus we see that our present-day consciousness has been acquired at
the cost of losing much of the former connection of our consciousness
with the cosmos. But once man has come to experience his freedom and
his world of thought, then he must emerge again and experience
cosmically.

This is what Anthroposophy intends when it speaks of a renewal of the
festivals, even of the creating of festivals like the Michael festival
in autumn of which we have recently spoken. We must come once more to
an inner understanding of what the cycle of the year can mean to man
in this connection; it can then be something even loftier than it was
for man long ago, as we have described it.